///// A BLOG OF VISUAL CULTURE: ART, DESIGN, STREET ART, SPACES, STYLE, CITY LIFE & MORE

Tag Archives: funny

Art can do many things. It can provoke, teach, offend, inform, comfort, inspire, scare, stimulate and bond us.

Street art, can possibly do even more things. Its public nature — in “the streets” — gives it more reach and exposure to a much larger, broader audience than most of the art confined to the indoors of a museum or gallery. That said, most of the audience exposed to street art do not care for street art.

That public may not “get it” nor like it nor think of it as “art,” but as they drive by or walk by street art, they cannot unsee it (at least not without some kind of head-trauma induced amnesia or decades of expensive professional psychological counseling).

In this way, street art is like a billboard, or what people in the ad agency business called “OOH” for “out of home” advertising.

So any explicit message contained in the street artwork has as much power or influence as a billboard, which itself may be inconsequential or great depending on the content, images and message. In any case, while that influence can be hard to precisely measure, nobody is in doubt, however, about its visibility and potential.

Occasionally street art, or art in general, imparts some gem of wisdom and understanding in the viewer. Often, depending on the media, it’s nuanced, subject to interpretation and open to speculation. But sometimes it’s clearly stated, expressed using the power and clarity of the written word, relying more on text than image.

“No money, No honey” (our comma) is the message in the stencil street art pictured here on a stretch of pavement in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District. The stenciled art provides a pithy, hyper-concise breakdown of the relationship between purchase power and sex (preferably of the hot kind).

The statement is a generally understood observation, and an unethical and shameful popular notion, that has existed since the beginning of time. To put it another way, it’s saying there’s a relationship between money and love, or the facsimile of love.

Is there a real-world example that might illustrate this relationship? Why, yes, there is, savvy reader! Yes, there is!

Take the case of Melania and Donald Trump. Melania here is the “honey” in the equation. The Donald has the “money.” If Donald does not have the money, it’s quite likely he wouldn’t have the “honey” (that’s Melania — c’mon folks follow along!). Because, really … Melania would give up the honey for this without the money?

Under any circumstances, the image of Melania giving up the honey for Donald Money is something we can’t unsee. It’s like street art. Or a billboard. Or street art ON a billboard. A really frightening billboard.

On the surface, the sentiment seems straightforward, sensible and pleasantly righteous enough: “Stop making stupid people famous.”

That sounds like a great idea. After almost two decades of Hiltons, Karadashians, a Richie, assorted “House Wives of …” and bearded redneck dynasties AND Honey Boo Boo, as well as countless reality shows of the type that require participants to compete not on vocational skill, but on guile, personality and the whims of flaky group politics, well, we’ve easily seen a lot of stupid people made famous.

And it seems just plain wrong that stupid people should be famous, that idiocy and narcissism, and bad behavior should be rewarded with the financial spoils and celebrity that most hard-working people will never even get close to in their lifetimes, even if they aspire to it.

So the sentiment to stop making stupid people famous is well-placed and understandable.

But we’re going to disagree.

Making stupid people famous is an industry and it’s not going to stop in the foreseeable future, not until people (audiences) lose interest in watching stupid people. It’s the watching of them that makes them famous. Yes, they may be stupid and undeserving and crude and base, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interesting. In fact, they can be very interesting. #sad.

At minimum, in the lowest-common denominator way, stupid people doing stupid things on TV is very entertaining. Packaged the right way, a lot of people will want to witness all the above variations of stupid-famous-people behavior (what we refer to as “SFP bevavior”).

This entertainment just can’t be “created” in the same way as a TV comedy or drama is. Though the set-ups, scripting and scenes may be planned ahead of time by a cadre of writers and producers, and reality TV shows are full-scale “productions,” and though reality TV stars are playing to — or are at least aware of — the camera, their behavior, even when easily predictable, is unscripted and often hammy and this can be fascinating, entertaining, cringe-worthy, amusing, laughable, intriguing, offensive and simultaneously all of above rolled into one. Because they’re not actors and because they’re not “acting.” And maybe because they’re a little stupid.

The sentiment and argument doesn’t just apply to reality TV stars, of course, but to others in the industrial-entertainment-media complex: Super models, film and television actors, musicians, politicians. Not all, not most, but a damn lot.

Takeaway: We need somebody to unassailably, righteously roll our eyes at and laugh at, somebody who is a deserving target, and somebody we can point to as a cautionary tale and as a teachable example of how not to be, how not to be an intelligent, decent human being.

Full disclosure: We once appear on a very popular mid-2000s reality TV show with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie called “The Simple Life 2: Interns.” We appear on camera with these stars for less than 15 seconds.

WWKT? What would Kanye think? We’ve recently been seeing a lot of these wheat-pasted WWKT posters around town. The one pictured here was on construction hoarding along Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice, in Los Angeles. The question is In the vein of “What would Jesus do?” In this case, it’s Yeezus.

So what If we actually take the question posed in this hilarious poster seriously and spend a few minutes ruminating on it, what might out answer(s) be? What would Kanye think?

First, with regards to the poster and question itself, Kanye being Kanye, he’d probably have something to say about it for thesake of saying something about it and the chance to get some attention. Otherwise, he couldn’t care less. He wouldn’y think about it all. Maybe he’d feel flattered. A mild ego stroke.

WWKT about Donald Trump? He’d think Trump was great and, had he voted, would have voted for Trump. But Yeezus didn’t vote election day.

All the many things that one might want to know what Kanye is thinking about … Well, it’s endless.

WWKT about Greek yogurt? WWKT about the news Star Wars film, Rogue One? WWKT about getting for Kim Xmas present? WWKT the latest song by the Chainsmokers? WWKT about bicycle lanes? About who will win the Super Bowl? About climate change? About cilantro? Charter schools? Solange? The Electoral College? Brexit?

Some campers at the Carpinteria Beach campground near Santa Barbara, California decked out their camper with some funny, inventive Halloween decorations, including some fake human limbs sticking out from under the hood of the RV, suggesting a dead body poorly hidden inside.

Last weekend this chest of drawers was left out on the sidewalk at the corner of Mulberry and Prince streets in Nolita, near SoHo, in New York City. Somebody who had been partying too much the night before got creative and wrote “Last night I got so f*cked up that now I’m here” with a gold marker pen. We like how the writer used each drawer for placing his words. Brilliant. Funny. Silly.